The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (18 page)

According to their on-air
advertisements, the insurance company had a
ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent settlement rate of all
claims registered. Olympia wondered about that other thousandth of
a percent. What happened there, eh?

She was beginning to have some
suspicions, as to how that impressive feat had actually been
accomplished. They had two years to settle and what was the big
rush?

The elevator whirred to a
stop.

The door slid back, and James politely
indicated that she must go first.

Chin dropping into fight
mode, Olympia Cartier strode for the kitchen and service area,
where all street deliveries were made, and goods sorted out, as
this cosmopolitan household consumed vast quantities of
consumables, and the remainder was destroyed as a tax write-off.
One of the great joys in her life was entertaining. Ordering a
little more than you needed was 
de
rigeur
 for the smart hostess, and
certainly the human servants were always grateful to be sent home
with leftovers.

The poor things were just struggling
along in some cases, what with the lowering of the minimum wage,
and with so many of their mates in prison. That was why the lower
classes never prospered. Single parents do not make good parents,
or so she had always believed. The trouble with poor people was
that they bred like rats. Some of them had quite atrocious looks as
well. Physical appearances said a lot about a person.

With a shake of her head, Olympia
Cartier wondered what the hell was wrong with them people
sometimes, but that was apparently the way God had created them; to
serve his mysterious purposes on Earth.

What those purposes might be could be
devilishly obscure at times.

***

“
What in the name of
Heaven is going on?” Olympia’s voice rose, a sure sign of impending
doom for someone or other—in a nice way, that is.

Nothing irrevocable, as Doyle often
said, and he knew what he was talking about. If it was just anger,
why then; it might pass. If they were really obnoxious then sooner
or later they would do it to themselves anyways. That’s what Doyle
always said.

But this was just
imbecilic.

“
Good morning,
Madame.”

The voices rang out cheerfully all
around, the kitchen staff, the porter, her human maids and the
Major-domo, Mister Carlson.

Carlson was the only non-human
domestic servant accorded the honorific as befitted his role as
senior non-human staff member.

Rover, who belonged to Devon, roared
around and around their feet, almost tripping her up as it came
racing up to greet her.

“
Mister
Carlson.”

“
Yes, Madame?”

“
Get that damned dog out
of here.”

“
Yes, Madame.” His eyelids
flickered a bit, the tone alone telling him that the mistress was
not pleased.

Silent infrared communication sent the
dog scurrying with plastic tail between its legs.

“
Did you sign for
this?”

“
Oh, no Madame. James, or
I believe Gerard did. He signed for it.”

“
Oh.” She scowled at the
whole lot of them.

Robots were supposed to have
intelligence, they were supposed to think.

Her shoulders slumped. They had the
bloody gall to send the thing over in a crate.

Betty had arrived by taxi, and paid
off the driver herself. She took her small valise, her only
luggage, and then presented herself at the font desk in the lobby.
Coming up from outside, entering the foyer, she had announced
herself in cool and confident tones.

This was something else, with packing
noodles of foam, fitted recesses lined with soft but shiny plastic
sheeting to protect it during shipment, and there was all that
damned pink flesh.

The bloody thing was naked.

The corners of her mouth turned down,
and her eyes swept the floor, littered with coloured plastic
banding material, steel bands, and tools—why couldn’t a robot put
their tools away? There was more packing tape, ripped cardboard, a
thick white disposable e-booklet. How crass.

“
Show me that
invoice.”

Mister Carlson, with a deeply
concerned look on his face, put his hands together.

“
But of course. There's no
charge, I definitely asked. Their robots said no charge, I have to
accept that at face value. It’s logged into the household register.
We can retrieve it immediately.” His tone was hopeful

Of course. No one used a paper invoice
these days. They carried a little too much weight with the older
crowd, and were notoriously hard to eradicate fully. There were too
many of them filed away in inaccessible places and you had to find
someone dishonest to go in and get them…

It registered that there were a lot of
people in the kitchen, although getting a new robot was exciting
for all of them.

The naked robot in the crate stared
straight out over Olympia’s head with big brown eyes.

Her glance impaled one of the
maids.

“
Find some clothes for
that thing. Or a frickin’ bed-sheet.” The girl scuttled out of the
room, hands waving on the ends of her arms in exaggerated
panic.

She looked at Mister Carlson, who
really hadn’t done anything wrong.

No, she was mad at herself. She should
have seen this coming.

“
This room could use about
half as many people in it.”

Wordlessly, he swung his
face.

“
Those of you who are
completely inessential and have other duties, please
go.”

There were seven of them, not counting
human maids, and Olympia sighed as they went through some kind of
vaudeville routine in determining who was it. This was something
that might have been amusing initially, but once in a while it
could be a real drag.

Finally, the remaining human maids and
junior robots had left, the cook going into the freezer, a habit
they had all learned to accept. Olympia would speak to her later,
but that one was definitely hyper-sensitive to mood and tone. The
cook took everything personally, an attribute that was thought to
enhance the cooking but more than anything made the thing a pain in
the cunt to put up with.

Yes, it was beginning to look like one
of those days.

With a shake of her head, Olympia told
them to put it all back in the box as best they could.

“
And whatever you do,
don’t activate that unit.”

“
No, Madame.” Mister
Carlson paused.

“
You didn’t activate it,
did you?”

“
Oh, no,
Madame.”

That was one good thing. Activation
was a process, and the thing would soon be loaded with data
and programming. It was a second-tier of ownership, a whole
new set of terms of service, and one going way beyond mere delivery
of a mechanism. There was no reason to download all the household
details into a machine that was going back to the
factory.

She had always been tempted to insult
Mister Carlson, just to see if she could upset his equilibrium. It
was said that the emotional responses were highly-tailored as to
task and the likely set of foreseen circumstances.

“
That’s a lovely head of
skin you have there.”

“
Why, thank you! Madame is
most kind.”

There was no sign of mockery, although
he did smile in the most natural manner. Did he see the absurdity
in it? Or was it pure bullshit, a programmed response. That
question was becoming more and more apropos.

To stare into those eyes was to admit
weakness. She almost gave her head a shake.

What poise they had.

With one last angry look, she turned
and headed back, up to where her personal office was located. She
wanted a look at that invoice.

Mister Danvers was going to get a
phone call, a rather nasty one, about this.

The only real question was who should
make it?

She would no doubt say something
regrettable, and their family attorney, a formidable man named
Ralph Coningham, at five-hundred-dollars a minute, would perhaps
intimidate. That might be just the thing. And yet the insurance
people had their nefarious and anti-social jobs to do.

The company was owned by an old family
friend.

It might be better to have Mister
Carlson, dumb as a stick as he was, simply call up SimTech and the
insurance company.

Tell them to come and pick it up, she
thought. Let him waste half a day on that. The elevator
closed on her.

She’d waved off the inevitable
accompaniment from Jewel. Jewel was more decorative than anything,
and Olympia wasn’t in that kind of a mood. As she recalled, Devon
had had a hand in ordering that one.

He thought he had a sense of humour,
and they all suffered for it sometimes. Olympia wondered what kind
of fluff they had stuffed her head out with, although she was a
whiz with the social media and up on all the latest trends. The
trouble was a lady needed a proper, serious thought once
in a while to have any depth.

Betty Blue. 

Why did you leave like
that?

Was that about me?

Or was that about you?

There had been times when they were
just girls together, and Betty Blue her best and truest friend.
That was incredibly liberating, a kind of personal revelation of
all she had been holding back. To live in the social microscope was
a kind of repression, and Betty would keep her secrets because she
was programmed to.

She would not repeat scurrilous
remarks, nor would she stoop to gossip. All of them had empathy,
too much in some cases. They had to bond, to imprint upon you for
their internal workings, the gizzard as Doyle called it, to become
properly effective.

The robots learned, but they also
taught you so much—it was undeniable, and Betty was the best of
what was a pretty good bunch. Some of her friends’ robot servants
were downright useless, at least according to them. There seemed to
be a great variety in their responses, with robots of all levels of
intelligence or even usefulness, in acquiring their individuality.
It was said to be an environmental response.

The question of Betty Blue still
haunted her. And yet she could not reasonably say that Betty would
not have accepted the delivery.

What was she expecting?

Really?

They were only robots,
and people made similar mistakes all the time.

For the love of God, wasn’t the
arrival of a new unit enough to make them call her and ask if this
was authorized?

It didn’t seem too much to ask. Wasn’t
that the simplest of security precautions?

Robots were as dumb as a stick, as
Doyle was fond of saying.

Carlson now, that one was as dumb as
two sticks.

Betty Blue, she had received affection
from Olympia. And she seemed capable of giving it, selflessly,
flawlessly…sincerely.

Olympia had been brought to tears once
by Betty.They were watching TV together, side by side on the
couch.

Betty’s eyes were awash with moisture
as the commentator yammered away outside a still-smoldering
building in some far-off country.

“
Oh. That’s
terrible.”

“
Nah. That’s the
Archipelago. I hate them.”

Betty’s face turned to hers, eyes wide
and disbelieving.

“
But…but they’re
people!”

It was quite a shock, to be
contradicted by an appliance. Olympia could see the logic in it. It
was an understandable point of view, in fact the only proper
one.

Hmn.

She turned away from Betty, bemused by
the response, so lifelike and so forlorn, so completely taken in by
it, and that’s when Olympia saw the little girl.

Four men wrestled an improvised litter
with haste and precision as Martin Sea-Monkey told the story of
an unprecedented attack on what was described as a girl’s
school. It was the third such unprecedented attack in about a
month.

Her face was pale and round. The low
profile of the blood-soaked white sheets from the waist down made
her jaw drop.

It looked like the child’s legs had
been blown off in the explosion.

That’s when Olympia cried.

Unconsciously, her hand crept over and
Betty took it and gave it a squeeze.

That’s what made Betty Blue so
special.

There really was something different
about that one.

Chapter
Thirteen

Something in Gene’s peripheral vision
darkened the doorway.

“
Hey.”

Dave Parsons was in plain clothes and
looked a bit overawed by his present surroundings. There was
nothing hard to knock on, with the soft-sided cubicles in this
modern, open-plan office. MacBride shared this space with several
others.